Gavin Conibeer1 and Arthur Willoughby2 School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia 2Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, UK This book aims to present the latest developments in high-efficiency photovoltaics, con­tributed by experts in the respective fields. The physics of solar cells and of advanced concepts […]

The idea of a quantum antenna is to use the wave nature of light rather than its particle nature [Bailey, 1972]. Incoming light waves oscillate electrons in an antenna that has dimensions such that excited oscillations are resonant for a particular wavelength of light. Each of these oscillations is then rectified for each antennae to […]

In Figure 9.1 one of the loss mechanisms is from radiative recombination (loss 4). In most devices this is assumed to be a minimum loss that cannot be reduced – for a cell at the radiative limit, i. e. no nonradiative recombination. This is necessary as a reciprocal device that can absorb solar wavelengths must […]

A few other schemes have been suggested to boost photovoltaic efficiencies that do not fit into the categorisations in the preceding sections. Their physics is not yet entirely proven but they may offer intriguing possibilities for much higher efficiencies, even if only in theory at present.

The final approach for increasing efficiencies, strategy (c) is to allow absorption of a wide range of photon energies but then to collect the photogenerated carriers before they have a chance to thermalise. A hot-carrier solar cell is just such a device that offers the possibility of very high efficiencies (the limiting efficiency is 65% […]

Thermophotonics is a variation of TPV in which the thermal source heats a luminescent diode rather than a broadband or metallic absorber as in TPV. This diode then illuminates a solar cell with a spectrum strongly peaked just above their common bandgap [Catchpole et al., 2003]. The advantage over TPV is that no additional selective […]

A thermophotovoltaic (TPV) system consists of a narrow-bandgap photovoltaic cell (about 0.7 eV) that is illuminated by black – or greybody radiation from a hot source but at a lower temperature than the sun [Couts, 2001]. In order to give an advantage, thermal emission incident on the cell must be filtered by a selective emitter […]

An alternative to specifically engineering multiple energy thresholds in a device or devices is to allow the photons to generate a thermal population of some sort in an absorber. The photon spectrum incident on the cell is essentially a thermal one, generated by the thermal emission from the surface of the sun at an approximate […]